


Marigold & Patchwork

by versacefrolic



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Gen, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 20:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17753075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versacefrolic/pseuds/versacefrolic
Summary: Post-KH3 feels that you know you've been missing. If the canon won't do it for you, be the change you want to see in the world.Everyone's favorite Sea Salt Trio in a messy, fractured AU that will satisfy your need to explain all that crying and hugging.





	Marigold & Patchwork

**Author's Note:**

> You had to know this was coming. Bad habits don't die so much as they phoenix down with alarming speed from watching nine hours of cutscenes on YouTube after the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. I guess this doesn't have any true in-game spoilers, but it has emotional spoilers. You'll see what I mean.
> 
> Title comes from an old song by The Appleseed Cast that I've always thought was about what this story is mostly about.
> 
> Answer Key: Nietzsche, Milton's Paradise Lost, Prometheus mythology.

There’s some sort of man-made reservoir on the outskirts of the compound, built with the kind of lovingly-crafted engineering that an architectural genius was paid seven million dollars to think up, the flat expanse of water utterly still in the early afternoon, mirror-like and reflective: a giant eye staring up into the sky. What was that line? About gazing into an abyss? He circles the word "abyss" in the notebook he's terrorizing with his fancy company pen, his name engraved on the side and winking at him as the pen loops around the page. AXEL SPENCE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT it flashes at him as he writes, ideas spilling out in a torrent. It was a good move, dragging himself from the office where ambient chillwave is piped in over the speakers from the top floors, something about productivity structuring and uniformity of thought, like all the worker bees can get keyed into the same wavelength and streamline their ideas into a cohesive, marketable whole.

 

It's worth a try, anyway, when you're in the big business of making businesses bigger, better. There's only so many characteristics of thinking-outside-the-box that an idea can truly embody while still adhering to an imaginary underlying structure. Minimalist, organic, authentic, except someone's getting paid six-figures a year to make it look, feel, and sound that way. Ah, the glory of marketing.

 

Axel can't complain—there's no one who would listen—because a six-figure income is quantifiable success, something he can wave at his parents and say, "Look ma. Look." Your good-for-nothing son is actually good for something, after all. All those harebrained schemes and questionably legal entrepreneurial enterprises became something that would pay bills and pad bank accounts, not land him in prison for money laundering or tax evasion or...

 

He circles "abyss" again, gazes at the reflection pool as he goes to finish his thought, something about branding and social media presence, when the sun arches over into true afternoon light and time slows, a memory coalescing around him in the emptying courtyard.

 

"Feels nice," his memory says in someone else's voice. Axel abruptly finds his muscles frozen in his body, pen poised in the notebook, mid-sentence. His eyes flit around the courtyard, and there, superimposed over the scene, is a hazy rendering of ghosts.

 

***

 

He shoulders into the too small room with his hands full of books, the door taller and heavier than he thinks any door should be. College dorms, though. Makes sense that the persons inside might want to deaden the sounds of fornication or excessive merriment to the casual passerby or resident adviser. He'd thought he'd have plenty of time to make the space more liveable, but someone has beaten him to the punch. A barrage of spirited rock music batters at him as he enters, the back of a body draped in just a towel writhing along with the guitars, the scent of freshly showered skin rolling in waves toward him as he enters.

 

"Hey! Sorry," the towel-wrapped body mutters, tapping hastily at a phone as the music dials down to an endurable volume. "Just got out of the shower." The body turns then, droplets rolling down the planes of a back replaced by startlingly blue eyes, an upturned mouth. "Roxas," the mouth says.

 

Axel raises his chin in greeting. "Hey. Nice to meet you, man. I'm Axel." He extends a hand, trying not to make it too awkward as his new roommate white-knuckles the grip on his towel with one hand and shakes firmly, business-like, with the other. "Mass Comm," he says, hefting up his stack of recently purchased textbooks.

 

"Nice," Roxas grins. "Psycho Bio, myself."

 

"Psycho Bio, huh? I admit to having absolutely no idea what that is."

 

"You and me both," Roxas says through a burst of laughter. Easy smile, genuine laugh. It's hard not to immediately like the guy.

 

"You transfer?" Axel asks as he stacks his texts on the free bunk, already lamenting the multiple trips it will take him to lug everything back and forth from his car.

 

"Nah, been here since freshman year. This is my first year on campus, though. Needed to get out of the apartment I was in. Time to hammer down, know what I mean?"

 

Hammer down, get to work. Take it seriously. _Take something seriously, for once in your life, Axel. Your mother and I aren't going to be a safety net forever. What is it exactly that you mean to do with yourself?_ "Yeah, dude. Totally."

 

There's an uncomfortable pause as Axel stands, unsure of what to do, or say, or think.

 

"Hey, you need a hand?" Roxas asks, gesturing at the pile of books and otherwise empty, unstructured space that will become Axel's side of the room.

 

"Thanks, man. I'd really appreciate it." Relief washes over Axel, nerves jangling like he's never met another human being before.

 

"Absolutely. Let me change into something a little less embarrassing, I guess," Roxas says, laughing again and leaning over an open suitcase.

 

And it was that easy. It was so, so easy.

 

***

 

His apartment is a study of flickering blues, the microwave chiming insistently that his dinner is ready for steaming consumption. Heaving himself from the couch, sliding through the filtered light cast off by another hour of streaming television, Axel burns himself on the paper lid of his purportedly healthy microwaved food. He's not hungry. Not for food.

 

A staccato burst of laughter from the characters dialoguing happily at each other on the television, and Axel forks a mouthful of portobello and goat cheese pasta into his mouth, chewing hesitantly like any taste or touch might somehow be a hidden hyperlink to a ghost he'd rather not deal with right now, thanks. Just required sustenance and mind-numbing procedural drama that, yes, Netflix, he is still in fact watching for the fourth straight hour in a row. But it is there in the same instant, another dinner, another hunger.

 

"Fuck," Axel swears, shoving the food away from himself and onto the grotesquely expensive coffee table. That's what six-figures buys you, right? Nice things. Obscenely nice things. The leather couch is soft against his back as he reclines, closing his eyes at the ceiling.

 

He knew it was never a question of forgetting. You can't extricate yourself from the ghosts wrapped into the fibers of your being, the way another presence shapes you into existence like hands skimming the surface of forming clay, spinning dizzily. Just a touch is all it takes. And the faster you spin, the faster it goes. Just a touch.

 

He cries. He used to feel like a kid about it, crying over spilled milk and bloody knees, but it has been years now. Years of the same abstract ache, the same swirl of memories. He doesn't shame himself anymore over it, alone in his too quiet apartment full of nice things and no people. It's just the way it is. He cries. He can't say that it feels good, that there's any release, but it's there. The trick is not to think about it, just breathe and move on. But right now, tongue stinging with the touch of too hot tortellini, Axel allows himself the guilt of remembering.

 

A summer afternoon, the exact shade of tangerine-tinged sunlight. And Roxas.

 

***

 

Roxas introduces her as his "resident pain in the ass," and Axel's first thought is that they must be related because the genetics required for eyes that stunning are more likely the result of discerning family planning than divine lottery winning. His next thought is that they must be dating because the ease with which she drapes herself over his shoulder to pluck a piece of fruit off of his tray is the right shade of playful, coy, and flirtatious. But they are Just Friends, Xion says as she picks up on Axel's watchful line of sight, his triangulation of their bodies.

 

She's a Humanities major, which they all agree is a study of what it means to be human, but don't know how to translate that into any sort of viable profession.

 

"I'll be a lawyer?" Xion suggests, chewing thoughtfully on a stick of celery.

 

"Overruled," Roxas says. "You're not loud enough." Her eyebrows quirk up, ready for the challenge, and Roxas smiles, shaking his head. "You know what I mean."

 

"I'll be really, really educated, then," Xion says, shrugging. "That's what I'll put on my business cards. XION KIM: EDUCATED."

 

"That'll get you some job offers, for sure," Axel says. Already the internship offers flutter in through the ether, piling up in his inbox. How any of them are supposed to choose how to set the first foot on the path toward what they'll become, Axel doesn't know. It's easier to float, focus on the microcosm of the moment. Roxas biting into a sandwich and dusting the crumbs from his mouth. Xion swiping around her phone.

 

She catches him staring, blue eyes flicking up briefly. "What?"

 

"Hmm?" Axel asks. He doesn't avert his gaze. She looks up again and meets his eyes.

 

"Curious?" she asks, the edges of her lips turned up just a touch. She leans across the table and extends her phone. The Google search reads, "What do three educated people do on a Saturday night?" Axel laughs and takes the phone, re-wording it to read, "What don't they do?" Xion takes the phone back and glances at it briefly before nudging her shoulder against Roxas. "I like him."

 

They decide to walk around campus to digest their carb-laden meals like super educated people do. Exercise, right? Taking in the fresh air and vitamin D. And Axel's had friends before, of course he has, but he doesn't remember it feeling so organic. You meet someone for five minutes and then you're hanging out like it's the most natural event that ever happened. Chemistry, maybe, the right combination of chemicals and the sky and the sea and the angle of sunlight. A happy accident.

 

The two of them are just ahead of him, nearly the same height. One dark, one bright, a study of how two things are the same, how they are different.

 

"You sure you aren't twins?" Axel calls to them. Xion turns and skips backward.

 

"It's okay, Axel," she says. "We can be triplets together." Then she points at Roxas and mouths the words, "I LOVE HIM." Axel knows then. Roxas, unaware, walks on.

 

"Feels nice," Roxas says to the open air. And it feels so nice, to be here. With them, the third of three. Blood pumping, digestive system working, lungs inflating. It's the definition of being alive, isn't it? Good things come in threes: health, wealth, happiness. The holy trinity, the Three Fates, and all manner of arcane allusion to the inevitability of what lay ahead.

 

And anyway, Roxas has eyes more like the sea, and hers more like the sky. Both boundless. Fathomless.

 

***

 

Bad things come in threes.

 

After he'd sliced his finger on the ten-page contract he'd signed in both ink and blood, including a non-disclosure agreement and a non-compete clause, he'd unceremoniously dumped an entire carton of Thai takeout on his new shoes, the first pair of unironically hipster leather loafers he'd ever purchased now awash in pad see ew. Then he'd received an invite in the mail. It was an all-in-one affair with the invite attached to a perforated postcard meant for mailing back as an RSVP. _Répondez s'il vous plaît_. Please respond. Please. He'd thrown it away immediately, then fished it out ten minutes later. Then took it downstairs to the dumpster where it foundered for three days under communal bags of refuse before Axel bolted down on a whim and sifted through stinking garbage until he found it. He has it still, buried in a box at the back of his enormous closet with a faded T-shirt two sizes too small and a half-used tube of sugar cookie ChapStick. That's all that remains of his once-closest friends on planet Earth.

 

_You are cordially invited to celebrate the union of Roxas Jacobs and Xion Kim._

 

He'd thrown up afterward, clutching his kitchen sink with panic, unable to discern why his body would react so viscerally. He'd chosen this, hadn't he? He'd made his choice. Like a thief in the night, he'd zipped up his overnight bag and walked out of the French doors with hardly a backward glance. There was no hesitation in the final moment, no regret, just the bitter burn of something extinguished. The way the curved handle of the door felt in his hand as he pressed down, slumbering forms mere feet away, the birdsong of dawn.

 

***

 

Loss is physical.

 

***

 

"I don't understand you," Axel says. Roxas is bent toward his text, fingers tapping ceaselessly on a laptop. Two days ago Roxas was alive and vibrating in a crowd of shouting college kids, all of them screaming the same words at a band in some local venue. Roxas had his body right up against him, the grind of hips against hips, the backward cast of his head as darkened eyes locked on Axel's.

 

"See something you like?"

 

Axel hadn't answered then, had only imagined he'd heard the words from the shapes Roxas' mouth made, but there was Roxas waiting for a response before the crowd took him away, surging toward the stage.

 

"I'm working, Ax."

 

"I can see that, but we were having a conversation."

 

"Takes two people to converse. I can't shout into the void forever. I won't."

 

"I'm not... it's not.."

 

Roxas shuts the laptop with a snap, swiveling quickly to face him. "Then what are you? What is it?" His voice rises with each step Roxas takes toward him. "Tell me. Say it."

 

Axel finds his vocabulary reduced to just one word. The necessary air to speak leaves his lungs, hands grasping uselessly at ideas he doesn't know how to articulate, that he doesn't dare. "I... I..."

 

"That's what I thought," Roxas says, snatching his laptop up off of the desk and heading for the door. "I'll be at Xion's. Studying," he says with sharp finality. After the door closes, Axel sees him flicker in and out of existence in the space he'd stood, replaying the moment over and over like rewatching it just one more time in the cinema of his mind might change the outcome.

 

***

 

Loss is both a thing and its absence.

 

***

 

Deadlines are met with ease, Slack messages pinging away happily with praise. It was a good fit, they'd told him as he breezed through the interview process. And such an opportunity, and what a great start, and he showed such promise.

 

It was the right choice, Axel thinks. A good fit.

 

But that is not how puzzles work. A good fit isn't necessarily the right fit, the perfect fit. Hands that fit perfectly in his own, the outlines of his body made to fit between two others. And Axel has friends, of course he does, friends who suck down sugary happy hour drinks while dissecting the finer points of discounted appetizers. They talk shop and go hiking and show him pictures of their dogs. And he fucks one of them halfway through a bottle of red, her dress mostly unzipped but still on and ridden high on her torso. Thick, muscled legs from a diligent gym routine and perfect audio as he thrusts inside her, savoring her throaty gasps and extended, musical sighs. But she likes reality television and sings along to mainstream pop and sucks dick poorly and she's just...

 

Axel brushes his teeth and looks in the mirror, watches his eyes watching a fraction of himself, just a fraction.

 

***

 

Loss brings with it a violence that bruises a body when a loved thing is ripped away or lost, and that brutality colors the space left behind forever. A loss-shaped hole that is still loss-shaped, still a thing, even if just the memory of a thing. Something that is both there, and not there. For years, carting around a gaping hole that cannot be filled by another body no matter how supple, by any book, any drug, any lovely diversion. A hole that leaks memories until he is awash in them, drowning in the music of easy laughter and damp skin.

 

Because what could have been? When the What Was was everything. Every late-night study session, every half-cocked weekend getaway to the nearest vineyard for wine sampling, every hazy Monday morning unraveling himself from the tired tangle of limbs threaded together in Roxas' bunk, Xion's hair plastered to her face with spit and spilled Franzia. It was the best kind of vice, the one you didn't have to feel guilty about because who gives a shit? When you're twentysomething and bill-free and coasting on scholarships and grants and good-looking friends who look good together, look good on either side of you in a dimly-lit theatre showing the almost passable film adaptation of Murakami's _Norwegian Wood_. Hashtag blessed, you think. Correction: you'd thought. Xion's fingers skirt over your knuckles as Roxas leans in to whisper something lewd in your ear, and your entire world is here, pressed between the sun and the moon, your twin orbits of wonder, of joy.

 

***

 

It's a weekend outing at Xion's parents' lake house, the pebbled shore painful against his bare feet, but charming all the same. They graduate soon, and it's a gift that keeps on giving. Roxas has graduate school in Boston where Xion took an adjunct position at a local community college, and there's an internship lined up for Axel at a mid-level marketing firm. Nothing fancy, by any means, but they'll all be there in Boston. There's talk about taking a weekend to look at apartments, and Axel feels that shaky uncertainty of adulthood, of the unknown, but he doesn't have to do it alone. No, his mind was made up despite protestations from his dissertation chair about selling himself short.

 

"Axel, they're offering you an entry-level position. I must advise you that this is a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Grads don't start at Kobe Digital. If I'm honest, no one can get in there. You'll start at 50k, and from there?" He'd waved a hand at the ceiling. "This is the dream. You need to take it."

 

"With all due respect, sir, my future is in Boston."

 

And there was a lot of hemming and hawing and the entire committee in there shuffling papers and surveying him in sheer disbelief.

 

"Ax, come get some food," Roxas calls to him from the patio door. Inside the Kims have either hired someone to cater dinner or are impressively accomplished chefs.

 

"Jesus, this is a feast for kings," Axel says, jaw practically on the floor.

 

"Well, it's definitely a feast, but—" Roxas begins, reaching into his pocket for something. Xion inhales sharply, her mother already sniffling into a tissue, and between one moment and the next, Roxas has dropped to one knee on the floor.

 

"Xion, I know you said your dad would never say yes. But he did." Roxas pulls open the small box in his hand, and Axel can see the glint of the diamond from his corner of the dining room, feels the slice of pure white cut him cleanly in two. "You make me so happy, and I know that there's more to life than laughter, but I want to laugh with you, cry with you, grow with you, and love you every single day from now until forever."

 

Roxas doesn't even ask before Xion says yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, each word like a nail hammered home as Axel sees his future wiped out in an instant. His eyes twinkle and his mouth smiles and he experiences the entire dinner through a frame of delay, like he's looking at snapshots of an experience rather than sitting at a table and forking in mouthfuls of delicate vol-au-vents and luscious hand-made lobster ravioli that taste like ashes in his mouth.

 

When Roxas returns to their shared guest room after strolling down the shore with Xion—how fucking romantic—Axel is sitting in the dark, gripping his fists tightly as they rest against his knees, immobile for all twenty-four agonizing minutes.

 

"You'd talked about getting married?"

 

Roxas freezes mid-step, hand inches from the light switch. "Yeah."

 

"So Boston was just, what, a diversion?" Axel tries to keep his voice even, low. It sounds strange to him, like someone else is using his voice to talk.

 

"No, we're still moving to Boston. You're welcome to come, of course. Axel, I wanted to ask you if—"

 

"Don't. Don't say it."

 

"Axel," Roxas' voice cracks, "You know I—you know we—it would mean the world to me if you'd be my best—"

 

"Don't," Axel grits out between clenched teeth, fingernails dug deep into the palms of his skin.

 

"I'm not angry," Roxas whispers. He sways lightly in the dark, his voice tight in his throat. Axel can't see his face, but he imagines his eyes are closed, he imagines the tears on his cheeks. "I was angry at you for a while, but not anymore." When Axel doesn't say anything, Roxas turns toward the door. "I guess it's your turn now." The door opens and closes, and Axel can't resist a glance as light filters in. Even through a blur of tears, the lines Roxas makes in the doorway make his chest clench, heart stuttering out a spike of need.

 

It's the last time he sees Roxas, the last time he sees Xion, any of them. Their faces at their engagement dinner are the last memory he carries with him out of the French doors at 5:46 a.m., a taxi already waiting at the curb.

 

***

 

It took some ego-stroking and ass-kissing, but enough strings are pulled to close the door on the Boston internship and coax the way open back into Kobe Digital. They weren't, after all, used to being told no.

 

It's 2,983 miles from Los Angeles to Boston. He'd pick the opposite side of the planet, but Axel doesn't think there are any high-profile marketing firms there.

 

It's not anger, really, so much as it is betrayal. Of friendship, of confidence. Roxas plus Axel plus Xion is three. Roxas plus Xion is one, and then there's just Axel. One too many. Axel could've just been happy for them, could've been the best man and done the Boston thing and found someone else. It could've been a good fit.

 

But that's the thing about puzzles.

 

***

 

He's a stuttering, shaking mess in his office, the ambient drone of music more like a backseat migraine threatening to take the wheel at a moment's notice. His Slack messages pile up unanswered and unseen, and there's at least one meeting he decided wasn't a top priority this morning. Sucking at the dregs of a doppio, bemoaning the startlingly blue California skyline, Axel thinks that work has never felt more like work.

 

A mailroom intern bustles in without announcing himself and has the grace to look afraid when Axel levels him a glare.

 

"S-sorry," the kid stutters. "You have... things."

 

"Leave 'em," Axel says, jutting his chin at the corner of his desk. The intern deposits the mail and scampers away. Axel has half a mind to stick the entire wad in the shredder when a familiar blue and gold color scheme draws his attention.

 

"Shit," he says on an exhale, drawing the thick envelope toward himself. The heavy paper is emblazoned with his alma mater's logo, and a deft flick of a pen through the creamy paper releases the notice of his graduating class' ten-year reunion, update your honors and accomplishments, reserve your spot now, et cetera.

 

"Shit," he says again, a whisper barely issuing from his throat under the stranglehold grip of terror and elation. They're gunna be there. There's no fucking way they're gunna be there. And didn't they mock people who showed up in droves for their college reunions, like shit, didn't they have anything better to do than gawk over who gained fifty pounds and who drove the nicer sports car?

 

Who had kids? Who got married? Divorced? Died? Axel's train of thought shudders to a halt. I mean, that's a possibility, right? They could be dead. People die, all the time people die in traffic accidents, in house fires. They die from cancer, from murder, from rare diseases with names he failed to spell right in Molecular Biology 194. His heart flutters in his chest and rather than scream at the top of his lungs, Axel presses the palms of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars.

 

He breathes. He picks up the phone.

 

"Yes," he says after two quick rings, "I'd like to reserve my spot for the reunion."

 

***

 

Xion's pale skin glows in the moonlight like she's lit from within, an ethereal haze emanating off of her body and diffusing the space around her.

 

"Look at her," Roxas says, slightly drunk and lusty as they follow her footprints in the dark.

 

"I am," Axel says, definitely drunk and wondering if they all have papers due in the morning, or if it's just him.

 

"God, couldn't you just—" Roxas says, doing something ungodly with his hands and his hips.

 

"I can hear you," Xion sings into the night, laughing. "Keep up, slowpokes, or you'll miss the show." Her pace increases and they have to run to catch up. "Quiet," she whispers, as they approach an overhang. The ocean rumbles below them, and in the distance...

 

"They can't hear us," Roxas says, swaying lightly.

 

"Shhh!" Xion says, swatting at him. "Look, Axel. Noctiluca scintillans, the sea sparkle. God, I can't believe my professor wasn't just fucking with us."

 

"I bet he didn't think anyone would be interested enough to look," Axel says, hardly believing his eyes. The glow is faint in the distance, but it almost looks like...

 

"Interested? Axel, you're such a gentleman. He means we are bat shit crazy to be out here at three in the morning to look at a bunch of fucking glowing goldfish."

 

"They aren't goldfish, jackass. They're dinoflagellates. That's like a kind of algae," Xion says to Axel, nodding at the neon blue floating just off of the coast.

 

"They're beautiful," Axel says, hoping his voice betrays at least a little of the reverence he feels. To be a part of this, to share something so hidden, so secret.

 

"Glowing algae, huh?" Roxas says, at least a little humbled. "You know, Xion, they sorta look—"

 

"Like your eyes," Axel finishes. "Same color." She smiles then, looks down. Axel reaches out and lifts her chin so the moon can catch the color again. "Yeah. Definitely."

 

"Your glowing algae eyes," Roxas croons.

 

Xion's eyes narrow a second before she slaps Roxas across the face and marches away. "Roxas, you're such an asshole," she says over her shoulder.

 

"Nice, Rox, real nice," Axel says, shaking his head as he starts after her.

 

Roxas grabs at his sleeve. "Wait." Axel pauses mid-step and turns back, the bioluminescence still floating out on the sea. "What about me?"

 

"What about you?"

 

Roxas goes very still, his grip on Axel's sleeve like a vice. "Don't my eyes look like sea sparkle to you?" He takes a step back and out of Axel's shadow, the moonlight glancing off of his eyes, and Axel wonders if he's ever seen anything so...

 

"Sure, Rox. You've got eyes like glowing goldfish, too."

 

***

 

There are whole months where he doesn't think about anything beyond the last five minutes of his life. What he's going to eat for dinner, where, and with whom. What shirt looks best in dim lighting, which pants make his ass look great but leave enough room for sitting in an office chair for most of the day. The smell clinging to the hair of the blonde that just walked by, tousled waves wafting iris and tonka bean into the hallway like a delectable trail of sensuality he could lick off of the air. Nice Ray-Bans on the new guy two office doors down, and yes, he definitely responded to that e-mail.

 

And then there are nights that are sheer torture. Interminable, endless hours of the same smiling faces telling him every cruel, selfish thing he's ever done, and Axel helplessly agreeing with all of them. The press of arms around his shoulders, the lingering peals of laughter down a hallway that recedes just out of earshot, but always the tail end. Just the linger, the aftertaste of something happy.

 

He could just hate it, hate the memories and what they mean, but he doesn't hate them. As much as they salt the wound, keep him up at night to fester and burn with flesh rent anew, he... likes it. Misses it. Misses them. Like the drunk getting clean and heading down to the bar to see all of his old friends. The gift that keeps on giving, the wound that weeps. Axel thinks some people watch dirty movies in the dark, some keep secret stashes of things they know they shouldn't have, addictions they shouldn't feed. But Axel has this: his secret, defining shame.

 

***

 

It's a gorgeous day, the rows of white lawn chairs blinding in the light, gulls crying overhead as alumni mix, mingle, and network in the way that adults network by exchanging e-mail addresses and asking what firm, hospital, publishing house, or school they're working with now. What grant, what seminar, what art installation at the Tate Modern. What Danny Boyle script, what Grammy-nominated hit, what magazine. Axel is good at this, at listing off accomplishments like they mean something more than simply being a list of things that you've done. He's spent the last ten years letting his list be him: the Be All, End All of Axel Spence.

 

And it is pathetic in a small, human way, that no one says, "I'm here! I'm a good human to the humans I know. I am a father, or a mother, or a husband, or a friend." Because these things are not valid measures of quantifiable success. Except why does every new recognition and visible, recognizable client namedrop feel like Axel admitting that he is none of things. Instead of raising a family, I raised my reputation. Instead of building a home, I built a social identity for a company of 50 people I don't even remember the first names of. Wow, I'm so impressive. I'm such a big deal. I am rich. I am successful.

 

I am a piece of shit.

 

"Black on black on black on black ensemble, huh? Your goth homeboy vibes are giving me life, Mr. Spence." Axel chokes on the drink he's sipping while exchanging accomplishments with a willowy blonde he can't place. He turns and first sees a mouth, just the hesitant uptick of lips that want to smile, but won't. Not yet. And he would be okay with that, just the almost-smile on a mouth he wouldn't ever be able to forget even if he lived to be immortal. He almost doesn't want to look past the lines of those lips, because then... because... "Come on, Ax," the voice breaks lightly, a flash of teeth biting anxiously at the right side of the bottom lip. "Don't leave me hanging."

 

Something inside Axel breaks. The last finger leaving a closing pair of French doors loses its connection. The door shuts. There is no going back to that place, that time.

 

"Jesus, Rox. Don't you age?" Axel has always wondered what it meant when, in books, people described other people as "a vision." She was a vision coming down the spiral staircase in an elegant sapphire gown. He was a vision in his tailored black tux. But he understands now, seeing Roxas for the first time in ten years. Roxas is a vision. Stunning, the way people must feel when looking at something they...

 

"It's all the vampiric blood-drinking I've been doing. That and bathing in the blood of my enemies. Keeps the rosy blush of youth upon me." Roxas is all nerves, fluttering wrists. Axel promptly forgets how to speak, how to think. "You're looking well. Is that," he bites his lip again, eyes flitting up and down Axel's tailored attire, "Armani? Something? Expensive-looking. I heard about Kobe. It's really, great. Axel. Really—"

 

"Stop," Axel says with a breath, holding a hand up and closing his eyes to blot out the feelings clawing up his throat. "Don't do the small talk thing."

 

"I'm sorry," Roxas says quickly. Roxas, who never apologized for anything. "Please don't, just... please. Let's go over there," he gestures vaguely at some trees in the distance. "Or fuck it, let's blow this joint and get a drink at Q's. Just give me some time to explain."

 

"Would it be totally socially unacceptable to hug you?" Axel asks quietly, eyes still closed. He doesn't want to see what Roxas looks like when he asks. He doesn't want the knowledge to hurt him later when Roxas inevitably leaves.

 

"You total assholes," a new voice says over Axel's shoulder. His breath catches as he spins, and there is Xion, dripping tears down her pretty dress. In the next instant, social acceptance be damned, they are all there hugging and crying like someone just won the Olympics or walked out of a burning building or came back from the dead. Axel can tell he's a mess, that his face is fifty kinds of lobster red, but there is an uncontrollable urge to hold and cry, cry, cry like every sob is a sentence that says, "I'm sorry. I missed you. I love you. I'll never do it again. How are you? How was it? What is your life? Are you still you? Have you changed? Do you still take your coffee black and your green tea with cream? Do you still like Game of Thrones and pop punk and sticking lip balms in the pockets of every jacket and pair of jeans you own?"

 

Roxas is the first to break away, embarrassed and covered in salty streaks that Xion hastily brushes away with the backs of her hands. "Thanks," he says, buffing away the mascara trails on her face with a sleeve. The sight both cracks and rejoins Axel's heart in a series of micro-fractures.

 

"You aren't wearing your ring anymore," they both say at the same time, both erupting into the laughter of post-crying hysteria.

 

"Still twins," Axel says. His chest has gone hollow. No rings. So that means?

 

"We were separated for a while," Xion says, assessing Axel's gaze. "What was it Rox? Three years? Longer than we were together. I guess I left my ring on just out of habit. I started, um," she hesitates, looking into the crowd, "seeing someone, so I definitely put it away. For sake-keeping," she says seriously at Roxas, who nods.

 

"Yeah, mine just wouldn't come off. Knuckle got bigger or I got fatter or something. I literally paid someone like a hundred bucks to saw it off. I kept the pieces, though," Roxas adds hastily at the look on Xion's face.

 

"Wow," Axel says. "So you were only together for... two years?" Two years of ten. Jesus fuck, what a waste.

 

"Yeah, just about." Roxas nods, shrugs like it's not a big deal when, to Axel, the world is literally imploding. "We work better as friends." He looks Axel hard in the eyes, "We all worked as friends. The three of us." Xion starts crying again.

 

"Hey," Axel says, drawing her against him where she quakes, trembling against his chest. "I get it. It was a long time ago. I was..."

 

"We were so unfair to you," Xion says into his chest, voice muffled. "And I know we talked about this, Roxas, and how it was our choice, but our friendship was so much more than just hanging out. We weren't just 'college friends.' We were more than that. We owed it to him."

 

"I was wrong," Axel says, and the weight of the world lifts ever so slightly from his shoulders. "I handled it wrong, for sure, but I was wrong about the whole thing. I was wrong every day for ten fucking years. I was selfish. I wanted"—he runs a hand through his hair—"I can hardly tell you what I wanted. I don't think," he levels a stare at Roxas, right at his over-bright eyes full of fear, of hope, "any of us knew exactly what we wanted. But I do know that this friendship was the best thing that ever happened to me, and walking away from it has, at least so far, been the worst. I could, like, wake up with single-cell carcinoma tomorrow, so that could change, but I'm telling you. These last ten years have fucking sucked."

 

***

 

Shapeless hours of darkness when he should be asleep but is not. Walking nightmares that talk and dance and feed him strips of crispy samgyupsal, that kiss him on the mouth tasting of three different liquors and Camel Crushes. Nightmares that tickle him on the exact spot on his sides that elicit uncontrollable laughter. What hell is this? To grow a heart every night and, every day, have it eaten by birds. They claw open his newly-closed chest and click their beaks down his ribcage, cracking each bone with cheerful caws. They feast, and Axel remembers.

 

_Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell._

 

***

 

When forgetting is not an option, they say the best course of action is forgiveness. But forgiveness is hard. Learning to trust again, especially with the chasm of a decade and an entire country between you, is something that takes work that does, in fact, feel like work. Picking up the phone to call and ask, "Hey, man? How was your week?" Sending a text at 1:32 a.m. that reads, "Dude, you have to watch Bird Box on Netflix." Adding people to Instagram and then shamelessly scrolling down for years, desperately trying not to accidentally like a post from 2009 and reveal your true lurker status while you're supposed to be in a meeting at work.

 

But when Xion calls to ask Axel how his day was, the answer is easier and more genuine as the calls become more regular. "It was great, how was yours?" becomes, "I am front row on the struggle bus, like captain of the underachievers over here. I need an IV of tequila and a cute brunette to sit on my lap or my face. Preferably both."

 

Roxas isn't much for FaceTime or phone stuff in general, but he writes funny things on Twitter and keeps a decent social media presence, enough that Axel feels like he knows what's going on in his life. It's a sad, one-sided fixation that gets sadder and sadder until one night after his third round of refreshing Roxas' multiple platforms that Axel realizes social media is a language that he speaks fluently. If you post it, they will come. And Roxas does.

 

A photo of his mismatched socks that he put on after snoozing his alarm eighteen times in a row. Caption: "Adulting." Roxas' response: "LMFAOOOOO" and three of the laughing and crying emojis. Axel smiles so hard his cheeks hurt, then he thinks of other horribly self-deprecating things he can post.

 

It doesn't take long before Roxas reveals that—gasp—he actually does know how to send text messages with ease and regularity. He was just shy.

 

"I'm fucking shy," Roxas writes one night after Axel accused him of hating his guts for three months after the reunion. "It's hard and like, weird when you can't take body language cues in person."

 

"So come over."

 

"K, I'll see you in sixteen hours."

 

And Axel laughs but still feels his heart stutter erratically in his chest. But Roxas does not turn up on his doorstep in sixteen hours.

 

It takes longer, as booking flights cross-country and taking time off from work inevitably does. He can't stay longer than the three-day weekend allows, but he is a miraculous bolt of light and energy that illuminates every dark corner of Axel's apartment. They drink cheap beer like they did in college, making it about four sips in before pouring the rest down the drain and heading to a local bar for nutty browns and tangy sours, playing giant Jenga until they're at each others' throats. Axel comes home from work wired and ready to eat an entire horse or at least two and a half portions of delightfully nutritious microwave food to find Roxas has ordered takeout from the nearby Indian place, so they mop up murgh makhani with garlic naan while watching two seasons of American Horror Story which, to Roxas' confusion, Axel has never seen.

 

"There's sex and demons and weird ass shit! I can't believe you patronize streaming television services and have never seen this!" Axel, entranced by the way Roxas peels apart sticky jalebis and licks the golden drizzle of honeyed rose water from his fingers, can hardly remember his own name.

 

"You're all sticky," Axel says, hazy with good food and better company.

 

Roxas casts his eyes toward him, Evan Peters doing something charming in the background. Axel feels the look like a lash across his chest, the warmth spreading down his arms, the room suddenly a hundred degrees. "I can think of about thirty different things that I shouldn't say to you right now."

 

The words come at Axel slow like the honey that clings to the sides of Roxas' mouth, air perfumed with spice and saffron. Axel knows what he doesn't want: three days. Three days of eating and fucking and using the timeframe as an excuse to do things they can forget about on the fourth day when they go back to their normal lives, their careful climbs up stepladders of success. No, Axel doesn't want three days.

 

"Here." He laughs, getting up from the couch and heading into the kitchen to dampen a paper towel. Roxas turns his face from side to side, allowing Axel's soft ministrations. I will wipe your cheeks, I will cook your meals, I will dry your eyes, I will make your bed, I will hold your hand. I will be your friend, and I will be your...

 

A list of accomplishments takes time, focus, and energy. And Axel, settling back down on the couch with Roxas to watch Emma Roberts sashay across the screen, Axel has nothing but time.


End file.
